Contrasts with Kaine Highlight Hillary’s Radicalism

As the vice presidential debate approaches, voters may be forgiven for wondering which Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine will show up to debate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.

Will it be Tim Kaine the centrist Democrat who defends coal jobs?

Kaine “went to bat” for Dominion Resources, the state’s largest electric utility, when he supported a coal-fired power plant near the town of St. Paul.

The centrist Kaine who supports gun rights?

Or the big-business, globalist Tim Kaine who supports free trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership?

Or will it instead be the Tim Kaine of the Democratic ticket — the one who has been pulled into taking positions to the left of where he stood before being plucked by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton?

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It’s likely to be the latter — but reminding people that Kaine has been pulled left will be Pence’s job. And there is plenty of work to do to compare past Tim Kaine with new, more extreme, more regulation-loving Kaine and his top of the ticket, Hillary Clinton.

The New York Times reported that Kaine supported NAFTA and the upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-nation deal with Pacific Rim nations. He once even said trade opponents have a “loser’s mentality.”

“The only way you’ll succeed [in the global economy] is by being an aggressive competitor rather than trying to hoard your dwindling assets,” Kaine told Bloomberg News in 2007.

The Times reports it “appears” Kaine is retreating from TPP support. We are likely to find out more on Kaine’s new trade positions at Tuesday night’s debate.

Guns are an interesting issue for Kaine.

Kaine is a gun owner himself. But over time, before being chosen by Clinton, he began to drift toward more regulation.

Following the massacre at Virginia Tech in 2007, Kaine began to expand regulations aimed even at qualified gun purchasers. He later supported the Manchin-Toomey bill in the Senate to close the alleged “gun show loophole.”

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Despite all these moves by Kaine, though, he is likely still to the right of Clinton on guns. Clinton has made radical restrictions on the Second Amendment such a centerpiece of her campaign, the National Rifle Association says voters may not get another chance “to get it right” if they election Clinton/Kaine.

Perhaps the biggest issue that could prove a sore spot between the Democratic duo is coal. Virginia is a “coal state,” in that it relies heavily on coal-fired power plants for electricity. About 37 percent of electricity production comes from coal-powered plants, according to the Institute for Energy Research.

Virginia also ranks No. 15 as a state coal producer, according to the National Mining Association.

By comparison, Clinton is so opposed to coal, she has let slip some rather draconian plans. In March, before the Ohio Democratic primary, Clinton promised to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies “out of business.”

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Kaine was aware of coal’s influence and importance when he served as governor from 2006 to 2010. He “went to bat” for Dominion Resources, the state’s largest electric utility, when he supported a coal-fired power plant near the town of St. Paul. Despite protests from environmentalists, the plant went online in 2012.

Of course Kaine’s past history with a few moderate positions hardly makes him a true centrist.

On Monday, The Daily Beast broke the story that Kaine had a Marxist and Catholic priest as mentor when he visited Central America in 1980 and 1981.

While the trip has been sold as a mission of charity, most people recall that the main reason for young liberals to head to Central America in the 1980s — and, not say, to Africa or Bangladesh — was to help locals oppose U.S. foreign policy and the anti-Communist regimes that Presidents Carter and Reagan supported.

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This appears to have been the case with the young, liberal Kaine.

His stance on the death penalty — he opposed it across the board — also came with him through his career. In 2005, Kaine’s Republican opponent charged in a TV ad that Kaine would not even support the death penalty for Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

Kaine said he is personally against the death penalty but added he will enforce federal law, which allows it for certain offenses. Kaine allowed 11 executions to go through in Virginia.

Clinton too said she supports it in certain cases.

The debate will be moderated by CBS News reporter Elaine Quijano, who will be moderating a major debate for the first time. The debate will begin at 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday, and will be broadcast on most major news channels. It will be held at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia.